"In some neighborhoods, where lemons are still sold from horse-drawn carts, where the men sit in blackened tea rooms and the women lay out sheepskins to dry on the asphalt, Istanbul seems less of a big city than a collection of Anatolian villages dotted with old palaces, voluminous mosques and glass office towers.
Istanbul is probably the most Western city in the Islamic world. But those who take the trouble to go to the the Fatih neighborhood to pay a visit to the tomb of the conqueror Mehmed II, who brought down Byzantium in 1453, turned churches into mosques and transformed the Christian Constantinople into the Islamic Istanbul, will also discover the city's deeply Islamic side. Here the women wear black, full-length veils, and many men are bearded and wear religious caps and collarless shirts. One small section consisting of a few streets is populated almost entirely by members of a 14th-century Islamic order and has no televisions or alcohol."
"The city wants Kaptan to put a stop to its growth. "We could open the doors tomorrow for a million new jobs, but we couldn't cope with it," he says. If development continues at the current pace, says Kaptan, Istanbul's population could easily swell to between 20 and 25 million in the next 20 years. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently called for a limit not just on the number of cars in Istanbul, but also on the number of new residents.
Planners want to cap Istanbul's population at 16 million. To do so, they plan to divert migration into the nearby region along the Sea of Marmara. They also plan to upgrade Istanbul's Asian districts, currently home to hundreds of thousands of people who commute to jobs in office buildings on the European side."
The Muslim World's Most Modern City: Miniskirts Meet Minarets in the New Istanbul - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
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